June 26, 2006

Click

The commercial for "Click" reminded me of an episode of The Jetsons, where George gets a device that lets him fast forward and rewind his life, and he ends up screwing things up. You can probably think of a dozen other things the premise of Click reminds you of. It's not an original idea. Back to the Future. It's a Wonderful Life. Etc. But even if it's not original, there's potential. To be funny, and to say something about life and choices and what really matters. Click doesn't quite do that, but at least it tries. I wanted to see it, because I kinda liked the last movie Adam Sandler tried to play in the ground between comedy and light drama, Spanglish. Spanglish wasn't a great movie, but it was interesting, because at least it strived to have some sort of meaning, even if it didn't quite succeed. And then I read some of the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Here's a sampling:

"It's a movie that shoots lazily for Capraesque and settles happily for Crapesque."

"All I wanted was a magical remote control of my own so I could skip past seeing this unfunny and monotonous piece of crap."

"As a comic, Adam Sandler has never had an original thought, or if
he did, he probably assumed he had stolen it from somebody, he just
didn't know who."

"[Click] is an abomination."

"Rarely have I wanted to fast-forward through a movie as much as Click, a treacly and not-funny-enough Adam Sandler comedy about a man who uses a magical remote control to fast-forward through life."

"This film is such a squirming, watch checking, horrible experience
I was wishing for a magical remote that would click it off."

"The movie is being sold as a comedy, but you know what? This isn't funny."

That last one is from Roger Ebert. He's sort of right. The movie's not terribly funny. I saw it in a theater full of kids, but it's not a movie for kids. It's about a guy who's lost in life and doesn't recognize all that he has. The Weatherman, last year, dealt with similar themes but a fair bit better. Click is infuriating because it doesn't know what it's trying to be, a comedy or a drama, and it dips in feet in both but never decides. And it has a predictable, useless ending. And it doesn't treat its gimmick with respect, and instead has the characters make nonsense choices that make no sense, and creates new rules along the way about how the remote works just to move the movie forward. It's easy, it's cheap, and it's unfair to the viewer.

So why didn't I hate this movie? Because somewhere deep down, there's a glimmer. There's a glimmer of something. Of something the movie wants to say, but can't figure out how. Of good intentions, not quite fulfilled. I don't know. It was interesting to watch it for the struggle to see how it was going to screw itself up and throw its potential away. It was interesting to watch because Adam Sandler is a watchable actor, and even when the material makes no sense, he can still sort of sell it. It was interesting to watch because it was so logically inconsistent, yet believed in itself so wholeheartedly.

I don't know why I didn't hate this movie. You might. But you might not. Don't take a kid though. I think if I was a kid it would give me nightmares.

2 Comments

I liked Spanglish in many respects, except what they did to Tea Leoni's character to justify the half-romance between Sandler and the maid. When I first saw a preview of "Click," I said "Didn't they do that movie with Jim Carrey already?" (Bruce Almighty)